Elon Musk, briefly the world’s first trillionaire – but now a mere billionaire again – is a man of exceptions. He’s built not one, but two of the world’s most pioneering technology companies (Tesla and SpaceX). He was talking about settling humans on Mars with a straight face some 20 years ago. Unlike most tech CEOs, he posts on social media multiple times daily, via his own platform, X.

In 2025, he gave what looked like a Nazi salute, very publicly, in Washington DC. That same year, he held a very senior role in the United States government, with no prior political experience, while simultaneously expanding his business empire.

In his brief and chaotic tenure as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he tried to turn government into a problem of data synthesis and pattern recognition, leading to optimised policy solutions. All the while, he seemed to forget that real people, entitled to fairness and justice, were affected profoundly by his desk-based decisions.

All this has made him a household name and one of the world’s most powerful individuals. Some, like journalist Cory Doctorow, have been asking: is he now exceptionally dangerous? And where does he fit in with other oft-criticised West Coast “broligarchs”, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Palantir’s Alexander Karp and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg?

Review: Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed – Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Allen Lane)

To answer these questions, you need to scrutinise both the man and the means at his disposal. This is exactly what Canadian political economist Quinn Slobodian and technology journalist Ben Tarnoff do in their carefully researched, well written and thought-provoking book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.

“Muskism” is a reference to “Fordism”, named after industrialist and motor vehicle manufacturer Henry Ford, whose mass production model altered American government and society for 40 years, from around 1935. The authors argue that Musk (along with other tech titans) is building a far-reaching industrial edifice that is similarly transforming society.

But while Ford and other mega-companies were the basis of mass employment, decent wages, strong social security and mass consumption in postwar America, Musk’s companies aim to forge a very different socioeconomic order. This order is stupendously networked, massively surveilled, anti-liberal and insular.

Under Muskism, the authors argue, oligarchs and national governments together use advanced technology to weaken democracy, divide the population, impose social hierarchy and immunise themselves from serious........

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